The Riddle of Prince Gong＇s Mansion Restoration

RINCE Gong's Mansion on Qianhai West Street,Xicheng District near Shichahai Lake consti-tutes an archetype of Beijing's 60 Qing Dynasty(1644-1911) prince's mansions, according toLuo Zhewen, research fellow and leader of thespecialists group of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. The state has allocated RMB 400million to rebuilding Prince Gong'sMansion into a national museum, RMB183 million of which is earmarked forrenovation and restoration. The mu-seum will incorporate …     

‘Bilingual’ education and discontent in Xinjiang

Efforts to promote and impose Mandarin Chinese as the language of instruction in ethnic minority schools in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, aimed at further integrating the state and raising regional educational and economic quality, have had mixed success. The 2004 plan to consolidate Han Chinese and minority elementary and middle schools and to make Mandarin the universal language of instruction in those schools is fostering an immersive second-language environment without prior preparation for students, bringing native speakers of Mandarin into unfair competition with non-native speakers. The increased focus on Mandarin has already had grave consequences for ethnic relations, especially in urban Uyghur schools, where the project is focused, while the mandate for change in educational curriculum and methodology has also been poorly planned and remains under-resourced, negatively impacting educational quality. The Chinese government has available to it other language policy solutions that are both more workable and friendlier to minority sensibilities.     

政治专家对美国中东政策的影响

第二次世界大战后,随着世界经济、政治形势的巨变,各国综合实力的竞争日趋激烈。如何科学决策成为政府头等重要的课题。为了制订出有效的政策,解决各种复杂的现实问题,政府便求助于各类咨询研究机构,思想库随之勃兴。这些思想库既不是纯粹的学术机构,也不是企业或者政府机构,而是以研究分析内外政策为己任、以影响政府决策和选择为目标的研究组织。对政府来说,这些思想库既能围绕政策制定而进行研究,又能发挥收集材料、处理信息、提供方案的专长,从而有利于国家领导们进行科学决策。实践表明,很多思想库在政策规划方面已获得公众的支持和认…     

加入WTO对西部商业银行发展的影响及对策

中国加入 WTO,对中国经济的各个方面都带来了程度不同的影响,对银行业的影响是巨大而深远的。西部地区商业银行如何应对 WTO 的挑战而谋求发展,具有重大而深远的意义。一、加入 WTO 对西部商业银行发展的积极影     

Countering Punitiveness: Understanding Stability in Canada's Imprisonment Rate

Canada's imprisonment rate has not changed appreciably since 1960. This stability contrasts with the increased imprisonment rates experienced by Canada's most obvious comparators—the United States and England and Wales. We examine this divergence and propose several interrelated explanations for Canada's anomalous pattern. While Canada is shown not to be immune to pressure for harsher practices and policies, it has been able to counter or balance these trends with other more moderating forces. In particular, we suggest that Canadians have largely been able to escape several of the wider forces or "risk factors" at the root of higher incarceration in other countries. Further, we suggest that certain protective factors of a historical, cultural, and structural nature can also be identified that have limited the extent to which Canada has adopted the same punitive policies documented in the United States and England and Wales.     

US Patent and Trademark Office refuses registration of flavour trade mark

In a case of first impression, the Trademark Trial and AppealBoard of the US Patent and Trademark Office has held that theflavour orange is not registrable for use with quick-dissolvingantidepressant tablets and pills.     

Newspaper juries

This article reports on a field experiment on the effect of media information on people’s attitudes towards the justice system. For the duration of a year a Dutch local newspaper took small groups of readers, called ‘newspaper jurors’, to court sessions of criminal cases and subsequently reported on their experiences and perceptions. Using a quasi-experimental design, we examined whether an attitude change in the general reader population of this particular local newspaper occurred as a result of the jury’s newspaper reports. Findings show that, after the treatment interval of 1 year, no attitude change in the general reader population could be identified that was absent in the control group.